The TV that aged like milk

Our culture writers choose the most problematic television of the 21st century, from Little Britain’ to Baby Reindeer’

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Television’s past is littered with debris. From the 1970s comedy” racism of shows such as Love Thy Neighbour to LGBT+ stereotypes including Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served?, it’s easy if often unfair) to conjure up examples of shows whose implied attitudes are, to put it kindly, of their time”.

But fast-forward to the Nineties and even much-loved and more recent classics like Friends turn out to be full of moments that would cause many modern viewers to wince. And as for Sky’s jaw-dropping one-episode sitcom Heil Honey I’m Home! – which mined the imagined home life of Mr and Mrs Adolf Hitler for comedy – well, the less said, the better.

TV is often an immediate and reactive medium and much of it isn’t built to last. Which probably explains why so much of it, even since the turn of the century, has aged like fine milk. Here’s a selection of the 21st century’s biggest, nastiest or dumbest clangers to date.

15. America’s Next Top Model

Ahh, America’s Next Top Model. No reality show of the Noughties was quite so good at making absolutely everyone watching – regardless of gender, sexuality, colour or creed – feel like total garbage. Ostensibly a bi-annual search for the most beautiful people in the US, ANTM always had the whiff of a PGrated snuff film devised by someone with a humiliation kink. We witnessed desperate teenage girls forced to walk down runways while trying to dodge enormous swinging pendulums, and one particular girl forced to pose sexily in a coffin shortly after being told her best friend had died. Television! Let’s never do this again. Adam White

14. Brass Eye special

Chris Morris’s